With their ratings at an all-time low and a ceremony that garnered mostly negative buzz, it seems safe to say that the 93rd Academy Awards were not a hit with the general public. Yet this most unusual mid-pandemic edition of Hollywood’s biggest night was not without its charm, and it presented a ceremony that reflected a year that’s been everything but ordinary. 

From the get-go, this ceremony looked like no other Oscars. While the awards are typically held in a large theater, most recently the 3,400-person-capacity Dolby Theatre, social distancing restrictions required a smaller venue. Instead, these awards took place in the ticketing lobby of Los Angeles’s Union Station, with tables set up for several dozen nominees. Many others joined on camera from locations around the globe.

These Oscars also had a unique visual presentation, likely owing to the influence of newly-appointed producer Steven Soderbergh. While the producers of the Academy Awards are typically less distinctive television veterans, Soderbergh is a prolific and celebrated director who began as an indie innovator in the 1990s, moving to mainstream hits like “Ocean’s 11” and “Magic Mike,” as well as low-budget indie films like “Unsane” and “High Flying Bird,” both of which he shot on his iPhone. Before the awards, Soderbergh stated that his goal was to make the Oscars look like a film, and many of his choices, from moving to a cinematic frame rate and aspect ratio rather than those traditional for television, to the distinctive camerawork throughout the ceremony, worked toward that aim. 

Beyond the visual, the 93rd Academy Awards tweaked many of the show’s traditions. Gone were the musical performances from Best Original Song nominees. Instead, extra time was filled by allowing uninterrupted speeches from the winners; no more awkward orchestral music playing off those who spoke for too long. In a more baffling move, no clips were shown for most of the nominees in a year when, more than ever, many of these films could use additional advertising. Most strikingly, the order of the awards was upended entirely, starting with the screenplay categories, and moving Best Picture to third from last, replacing it, most controversially, with Best Actor as the show’s finale. 

Stepping back, though, who really cares about the Oscars in 2021? Certainly fewer people than ever before. Last year’s nominees for Best Picture grossed over $2 billion worldwide. This year’s slate? A paltry $35 million. With many theaters still shuttered or reopening with limited capacity due to the pandemic, which has stretched on since just after last year’s Oscars, many have gone without keeping up to date on the latest awards draws. A cursory search of online reactions would back this up, as popular social media posts with reactions claiming that no movies came out in the last year proliferated, with many joking that pre-pandemic 2020 blockbusters like “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Bad Boys For Life” would be the only contenders at the Oscars. 

Many of the films that were nominated, though, ended up doing quite well. While in most years, a few films dominate the awards, among this year’s slate of eight nominees for Best Picture, seven came away from the night with an Oscar statuette. Beyond that, other winners made significant impressions.

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” a drama centering on a group of blues musicians in the 1920s, won two awards, for Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. For the latter, the award was accepted by the trio of Min Neal, Jamika Wilson, and Sergio Lopez-Rivera, with Neal and Wilson becoming the first Black women to win Oscars in this category.

“I can picture Black trans women standing up here, and Asian sisters, our Latina sisters and Indigenous women,” Neal said in her acceptance speech. “I know one day it won’t be unusual or groundbreaking. It will just be normal.”

In a particularly moving moment, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, who won Best International Film for his drinking culture drama “Another Round,” dedicated the film to his late daughter, Ida. Ida, Vinterberg revealed, died at 19 in a car accident just days into filming “Another Round.”

“Before her death, it was an ambition to make a life-affirming film,” Vinterberg said. “[After the accident] that became a necessity. I wanted to celebrate the life that we lose so easily.”

“Judas and the Black Messiah,” the real-life story of an FBI mole’s infiltration of the Black Panther Party, scored trophies for Best Original Song for “Fight for You” by H.E.R. and Best Supporting Actor for Daniel Kaluuya, who, for his portrayal of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, became the first Black British actor to win an Oscar. Kaluuya’s acceptance speech was a memorable one, as he exuberantly called for political action in the legacy of the Black Panthers before thanking his parents for having had sex to create him, as the telecast cut to his embarrassed-looking mother, watching from one of the Academy’s remote broadcasts in London.

“Mank,” a historical drama about the writing of “Citizen Kane,” won for Best Production Design and Best Cinematography. Youn Yuh-jung won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as the offbeat grandmother Soon-ja in “Minari,” the story of a Korean immigrant family who start a farm in rural Arkansas. Youn is the first Korean actor to win an Oscar, and the first Asian woman to win for acting since Miyoshi Umeki in 1957. Youn also gave a memorable acceptance speech, jokingly calling out presenter Brad Pitt, who served as a producer on “Minari,” for not being there during filming, correcting mispronunciations of her name (it’s Yuh-jung, with a hard J, not Yuh-young, or Yoo-jung), and telling her sons about why she won the award.

“This is the result because mommy works so hard,” Youn said humorously. 

Emerald Fennell, the writer and director of the dark comedic feminist thriller “Promising Young Woman,” opened the ceremony by taking home the award for Best Original Screenplay, wowing the audience members unfamiliar with the fact that she shot the film in just 23 days while seven months pregnant. “Sound of Metal,” a drama about a heavy metal musician coming to terms with hearing loss, won two awards, for Best Editing, and, fittingly, Best Sound. “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” a real-life historical courtroom drama about a group of anti-war protestors in the 1960s, was the only nominee for Best Picture to come away empty-handed. 

“Nomadland,” a semi-documentary drama about modern-day nomads in the American West, won the most awards of any film. Chloé Zhao won Best Director, Frances McDormand won Best Actress for her leading role as Fern, and the film won Best Picture. Zhao became the first Asian woman and woman of color overall to win for directing, and only the second woman overall, after Kathryn Bigelow’s 2009 win for “The Hurt Locker.” The award was presented remotely from a theater in Seoul by last year’s winner, “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho, accompanied by translator Sharon Choi. In her acceptance speech, Zhao quoted from a Chinese poem she learned growing up called “The Three Character Classics.”

“People at birth are inherently good,” Zhao quoted. “And those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid, and I still truly believe them today…. I have always found goodness in the people I met, everywhere I went in the world.”

“The Father,” the story of an elderly man’s struggle with dementia, came away with wins for Best Adapted Screenplay for writers Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller and closed the night with a win for Best Actor for lead Anthony Hopkins. This is Hopkins’s second Best Actor win, first winning for his role as Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs” in 1991. Hopkins, now 83 years old, is the oldest actor to win an Oscar and the first actor on the autism spectrum to win, as Hopkins revealed his diagnosis in 2017. As Hopkins was not present at the awards, instead choosing to be asleep at his home in Wales, where it was 4 a.m., the show ended abruptly, with presenter Joaquin Phoenix, last year’s Best Actor winner for “Joker,” accepting on Hopkins’s behalf as the credits rolled.

This ending was by far the most contentious moment of the night. Going into the awards, Chadwick Boseman, who played the character of Levee, an ambitious and headstrong musician in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” was the favorite. This was due not only to Boseman’s strong performance, but to the fact that this was his last role, as Boseman died of colon cancer last August at the age of 43. Having previously won a Golden Globe for his role in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” a posthumous win at the Oscars was seen as a potential capstone to honor Boseman’s legacy.

As Boseman was known for playing Black icons, from real figures like Jackie Robinson and James Brown to fictional characters like the Marvel superhero Black Panther, his nomination attracted widespread public attention in an otherwise overlooked Oscars. As viewers realized Best Actor was taking the traditional place of Best Picture as the finale of the ceremony, many assumed they were about to end on a touching tribute to Boseman. So when Hopkins was announced as the winner, many responded with shock, then indignation. 

Many may have thought that the Academy was purposefully baiting Boseman’s fans for ratings, but if anything, this incident proves that the results of the Academy’s votes are genuinely kept secret until their last-minute onstage reveal, as it seems that even the show’s producers thought Boseman was about to win. Additionally, while Boseman’s performance in “Ma Rainey” was outstanding, the work Hopkins does in “The Father” is just as undeniably great. While the optics of an older white man winning over a younger Black man look questionable in an era increasingly focused on diversity in film, Black nominees and other nominees of color were not snubbed overall as the 93rd Oscars hit various milestones. Given how little attention this year’s nominees got, one may wonder if those upset at Boseman not winning even saw “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” or “The Father,” or if they just know Boseman as the beloved hero of “Black Panther” and the “Avengers” films. Regardless, Boseman’s legacy is intact, Oscar win or not. 

The Oscars this year were a disappointing affair for many, from fans of Chadwick Boseman to the general public, who tuned in only to change the channel after realizing they hadn’t heard of the nominees. However, for those who enjoyed the nominated films, the 93rd Academy Awards were a pleasant, at times moving, and unusually intimate affair, with a slate of awards generously distributed across the nominees. Despite its inconsistencies and formatting fumbles, this year’s ceremony was a fitting one for a year of cinema unlike any other.

 

Oscar Kim Bauman can be reached at obauman@wesleyan.edu